


out of time

by youcouldmakealife



Series: always in tandem [53]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 21:15:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19980619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: He hates leaving empty-handed, but what can you do.





	out of time

There’s probably no easier place to get laid than the Olympics — it makes college look tame, and the Terriers were fucking kings on campus. Everyone’s running on adrenaline and fumes, expectations and excitement. Everyone’s in superb physical shape, and everyone seems to be single: even the people with wedding rings on claim they’ve got an exemption, up to and including Georgie’s roommate, and he might be telling the truth, might just hope it never gets back stateside. Georgie isn’t asking. People are fucking, a lot, and with the premium on space and the shared room situation, Georgie walks into shit more than a few times just in the first few days.

He feels like what an alcoholic sent to a frat party would feel like. Or maybe just him at a frat party, because fuck knows there’s enough booze around the place too. Drugs, but he doesn’t touch them, other than smoking up sometimes during the offseason. One thing he’s good at avoiding. That shit was everywhere on the Barons, and sometimes Georgie’s surprised, at his lowest, he never opted in. He guesses the booze did enough.

Georgie texts his family a lot. Texts Melissa. He hangs out with Jake and Jordan and sometimes Tony, though Tony’s kind of crappy company except when they’re breaking down plays, and he focuses on hockey, because that’s what they’re there for.

*

Team USA starts out shaky in the prelims; Georgie’s played with some of these guys before, but none of them, except Casey, for anything more than other tourneys, and the chemistry isn’t there yet for most of the lines. That’s true of basically every team, though. They’ve got time, and he knows from experience that it’ll start clicking in a game or two. Thankfully they had Slovakia to start, eked out a win despite the scramble, will get another practice chance against Slovenia before the big guns need to come out: Russia will bowl them over if they’re not careful.

Georgie says ‘we’, but he watches it from the sidelines. It sucks, but it’s what he expected — he knew he was seventh D, he knew he was there as insurance. Honor, privilege, all that. He might have a go when they play Russia — Russia’s got firepower they’re going to need to find a way to shut down, but their goalie tandem isn’t as strong, the prototypical ‘offense is your best defense’ game, and Georgie knows one of the reasons they picked him was for the power play.

_Where were you????_ , Melissa sends after the Slovakia win, and Georgie’s stuck explaining insurance players via text, which isn’t great, but thankfully, as a basketball fan, is something she gets in a minimum of words. He doesn’t play against Slovenia, another win. He’s in the line-up, as expected, against Russia, but he doesn’t play much other than the second power play unit. He scores on one of them. They lose, but he’s in the third pair going forward. Good things, bad things.

They go out in the quarters. It was a game they had every single advantage: shots on goal, possession, power plays, everything. Sometimes you lose those, those games you deserve to win, those games that come down to puck luck, and it hurts so much more when you do. If they had a second chance at it, Georgie’s sure they would have won it, but they don’t get one. 

*

Georgie gets drunk the night they bow out. Really fucking drunk, and he’s not the only one. They’re not the good kind of drunk, any of them, not the celebratory, cheerful kind of drunk. Some of them are sad sacks, some of them are sharp, like if you nudged them too hard they’d take it as an excuse to deck you. Some peel off early, to bed or to someone else’s bed, and Georgie gets drunker and drunker, takes everything that’s handed to him, flirts outrageously with a Swiss skater because it’s less depressing than dwelling on shit.

She’s clearly down for it, and it wouldn’t even be cheating; Melissa straight up said not to rush into anything, and she’d sent him a text, _Everyone get laid at the Olympics as much as they say?_ , this ‘I don’t give a shit if that includes you’ winky face attached. Maybe he read too much into it. Even if he did, it still wouldn’t be cheating. 

She gets bored when he doesn’t make a move, wanders off, and other than the fact Jordan has to walk him back to his room and physically put him to bed, nothing happens. He could have fucked her. It would have almost been easier to do it than not do it.

He starts and stops trying to text Melissa the next morning, head pounding over breakfast, but what’s he even going to say, ‘give me brownie points for something you haven’t even asked me for?’. Arranges a Skype call with Daniel for later, but the wifi’s so spotty they switch to chat, and for some reason he can’t type the shit he’d be able to say, have it all stark black and white, staring back at him. He feels like he’s wasting Daniel’s time, lets Daniel steer him over to how he feels about the loss instead, something that feels like firmer ground. He went to a sports psychologist for a reason, though they haven’t talked much about his hockey lately, not since it finally started working.

Georgie tells him he feels shitty, and Daniel says that’s understandable, and it is. It doesn’t make him feel any less shitty.

*

He’s too busy to fuck anyway. He was busy playing, or not playing, except now he’s not actually busy at all, this weird limbo where they’re not going home yet but there’s nothing to do but watch Team USA in other events, no longer really there as athletes. The rest of Team USA is racking up medal after medal, at least, and Georgie goes with Jake to watch the women’s hockey team kick ass and take names, steamrolling everyone on their inevitable way to a Gold medal game versus Canada. Rematch of a rematch of a rematch. 

“Canada won’t be getting two Golds in hockey if the girls keep this up,” Jake says with some satisfaction after Team USA destroys Finland in the Semi-Finals.

“Little premature, Lourdy?” Georgie asks. It’ll be a Canada-USA match-up for Gold for sure, but on the men’s side, Canada’s got two games to win to make it there. If they face the kind of game of puck luck Team USA had, Devon in net or not, they’ll skid straight to a stop, get bronze, tops. Tournaments are unpredictable that way. Other than the inevitable USA-Canada Gold game, Georgie guesses, but that’s what happens when two teams are a generation ahead of the pack. Anyone still in it can nab it with a good enough hundred and twenty minutes.

Jake shrugs. “They’re going to get it,” he says. “Made my peace with it.”

“Oh sure, your peace,” Georgie says, because he’s sure, for Jake, Canada winning it is second only to them winning it. 

“It’ll hurt my ego a bit,” Jake says, sounding both honest about that and kind of proud anyway.

“Well,” Georgie says. “I’m sure it’s hurting anyway. May as well have a couple of my teammates come back happy.”

“Yeah,” Jake says. “C’mon, Erika told me we were welcome to come to the locker room and celly.”

“They aren’t afraid our luck will rub off on them?” Georgie asks, but they go down, and they celebrate with Team USA, and it feels good, knowing the girls are going to bring back Silver at minimum. Probably Gold, Jake’s right about that. 

He’s right about the other thing too, though Georgie’s not going to give it to him, knows he spoke out of wishful thinking and not some sort of eerie prescience. And it’ll be good, having Devon and David coming off a Gold medal, Oleg off a Bronze, and what’s good for the Caps is good for Georgie.

*

He hates leaving empty-handed, but what can you do. 

*

That makes him sound flippant, that makes it sound like he doesn’t care. He cares. He’s had a pit in his stomach since they got knocked out. He expected to medal. They all expected to medal. They did last time, and even if they hadn’t, they would have expected it. It isn’t like sitting on a shit roster on a shit team, knowing you won’t make the playoffs. It isn’t even like sitting on the Caps, walking into the playoffs, hoping so hard, but knowing it might not happen. They thought they would, and then they didn’t, and now they all feel like they let down the whole fucking country, even the people who don’t care about hockey.

Georgie’s not the worst of them, not even close. Never has been, never took it to heart the way a lot of the guys did in U18, U20. He remembers the look of faint disgust on Robbie’s face when Georgie brought out the bottle of vodka after their U20 defeat, the way Georgie had bet against Team USA winning. Except he hadn’t, really. If he’d won, he’d be down a bottle of bourbon but he wouldn’t care, because he’d have won. If he lost, he’d be up a bottle of vodka to drown the disappointment he’d feel in his teeth, his throat, the pit of his stomach.

Robbie helped him finish that bottle, disgust or not. The two of them finished it off just fine.

*

The flight home is so long that Georgie’s jet-lagged by the time they hit their layover in San Francisco, players all scattering for flights home, everything hazy around him, a cup of coffee in his hand even though he should sleep on the last leg. Or maybe he shouldn’t, maybe that would make the jet-lag worse. He doesn’t know, doesn’t think there’s a good strategy for jumping back half a day. 

_What time are you back?_ Melissa’s sent him, presumably in response to a _On my way home_ he sent her before they left. It feels like he sent it days ago.

_We get in super late_ , Georgie texts in response to the presumed question. Or early. Or who the hell knows. Time is a construct, and he’s never felt that more than he does right now.

_Come over anyway_ , Melissa says. _Before you’re too jetlagged to fuck._

Georgie snorts. She’s probably got a point anyway, even though he’s already feeling it. He’s going to be hurting for the next while. Everyone who’s coming back from South Korea’s going to be playing on shaky legs for their first few games back.

_Send me the flight details, I’ll stay up as long as you’re not delayed._ Melissa adds, and Georgie sends her the flight details, finishes his coffee. He doesn’t sleep on the plane, though he’s sick of the book he’s reading, sick of the games on his phone, sick of watching movies, so he mostly just zones out. The flight from San Francisco to Washington feels longer than the flight from Seoul to San Fransisco, but time, construct.

He texts Melissa when he lands, gets a _Come on over_ , so he guesses she’s still awake. Chaps gives him a nod at baggage claim, looking half dead, same as Georgie probably looks, and Georgie tries to bite down the jealousy he feels, knowing he’s got a Gold medal in the suitcase he’s waiting for. Well, Georgie doubts it’s his suitcase. He’s probably got it in his carry-on, too paranoid about lost baggage to take the risk. That’s what Georgie would do in his case. Might even wear it for the flight. It’d probably set off the metal detectors, but what would they say, ‘no, you can’t wear your Gold medal on the plane.’?

Georgie’s suitcase comes before Chaps’, and he heads out with a nudge to David’s shoulder, a “Congrats, you deserved it,” gets a wan smile in return. Georgie takes an Uber to his place, drops his suitcase off, showers the airplane smell off and changes into fresh clothes and doesn’t get anywhere near his bed in case it starts calling him, gets another Uber to Melissa’s, though he waits for it forever, seems like he got the only one on the road.

Georgie’s kind of surprised by the relief that washes over him when Melissa opens the door, looking just — the same, he guesses, though more casual than he usually sees her, hair in a messy bun, wearing an oversized Team USA hoodie and pyjama bottoms with ducks on them. He feels, he doesn’t know, like he’s home now, in a way he didn’t at the airport, driving through the deserted Virgina streets.

“Nice hoodie,” Georgie says. The ducks are too cute to be made fun of.

“It is actually obscene how much they charged for it,” Melissa says. “What kind of hoodie costs eighty bucks? Are they paying you guys with hoodie money?”

“They just pay us in hoodies,” Georgie says, grinning at her. “It’s a whole hoodie trade system.”

Melissa laughs. “You’re fucking lucky I like you enough to shell out that kind of money for a damn sweatshirt, that’s all I’ll say.”

“Yeah,” Georgie says, grinning even wider. “Pretty lucky.”

“Quit being charming and come inside,” Melissa says, and Georgie isn’t going to say no to that.

“Sorry you didn’t get it,” Melissa says, when he follows her in, puts his coat in the closet. “I know I already said it, but.”

“It’s fine,” Georgie says. 

She raises an eyebrow at him.

“Well, not fine, but what can you do,” Georgie says.

“You want a drink?” she asks.

“It’ll put me to sleep, probably,” Georgie says.

“After, then,” Melissa says, walking straight towards her room, and Georgie follows.

He thought he’d crash immediately, worried she wouldn’t be cool with him sleeping over — he has before, but it’s still in the only if invited to stage — but instead he’s wide awake. It’s the middle of the afternoon in his head right now, so that probably makes sense.

“You want that drink?” Melissa asks, and he shouldn’t, probably, but maybe it’ll help with the sleep. She pulls the hoodie back on but doesn’t bother with the ducks, brings back a bottle of wine, two juice glasses instead of wine glasses. It’s cold and sharp, a little drier than he likes it, but not necessarily in a bad way. She has good taste in alcohol, which he guesses isn’t surprising. 

“You work tomorrow?” Georgie asks. “I don’t want to keep you up.”

“Not until six,” she says. “I can nap in the afternoon, it’s fine.”

Her nails are usually something understated, that manicure with the white tips he doesn’t know the name of, but they’re not understated right now, stripes of red, white, and blue. “Nails match your hoodie,” Georgie observes.

“Don’t read into it,” Melissa says. “These nails got me killer tips during the Olympics. Patriotism sells great.”

“I bet,” Georgie says.

“You know,” Melissa says, pauses for a moment, and Georgie waits her out. “I missed you kind of more than I was expecting to.”

“Me too,” Georgie says.

Melissa snorts. “You were a little occupied.”

“No, I mean it,” Georgie says. “Me too.”

“So,” Melissa asks, looking at the glass in her hand. “I don’t know what that means.”

“I don’t know either,” Georgie says. “Whatever you want it to.”

“I dunno,” Melissa says. “Like, maybe you’re my boyfriend? I don’t know. I don’t do this much.”

“Yeah, me either,” Georgie says. “That’d be cool by me, though.”

“Cool by you,” Melissa says, rolling her eyes at him.

“I said what I said,” Georgie says.

“Okay,” Melissa says. “Cool by me too, then.”

“Cool,” Georgie says.

“That word is losing its meaning right now,” Melissa says. “It’s way too late for this conversation.”

“Sorry,” Georgie says.

“Nah, it’s cool,” Melissa says. “Fuck, now it really doesn’t mean anything. You think you can sleep?”

“Probably not, but I can try,” Georgie says. “Unless you want me to head out?”

“Stay,” Melissa says.

“Sure,” Georgie says.

She falls asleep way before he does, but he doesn’t really mind it, the silence, except for her even breathing, the room dark except for light filtering in the window from a street lamp, everything feeling sort of unreal. They have practice tomorrow he has permission to skip out on, a game the day after, a season they’re right in the middle of. He has to turn everything back on sooner rather than later, knows he does, but in the quiet of Melissa’s bedroom, he can put it off a little while longer, feels like he has the luxury of time.


End file.
